This blog is a great opportunity to share ideas about ways to
transform schooling as we know it, to help all students realise their
talents, passions and dreams. Be great to hear from anyone out there! Feel free to add a comment to Bruce's Blog and enter e-mail to receive postings

Friday, December 27, 2013

Now I no longer do any work for schools my garden has occupied me. A couple of times walking around contributes to my fitness regime!

As I walk around I observe changes in the growth of plants and keep an eagle eye out for Tradescantia ( commonly called Wandering Jew) which is always poised to recolonise the garden.

Mostly gone but...

I often think , while walking around, that it is amazing what can be remembered without recourse to making notes and compare this to the on-going demands of assessing progress of students in a teachers class!

I often also walk around the track at night to see if I can observe native trout as well as admiring my very own glow-worms. I also often see eels.

I was invited out to friends Christmas dinner and made a decision to contribute a leg of lamb I heard a well known cook say on the radio that she was slow roasting a leg of lamb for her Christmas dinner so I thought I would give it a go. I Googled for a recipe and , after being a bit confused with the choices, decided to combine the best of them all. The trouble was it required seven hours cooking so I had an early start!

It was to be a long day. After a few hours I began to worry it might be over cooked and reduced the heat - as it turned out it was just about right. It looked very impressive - I had covered it with a topping of crumbs, olive oil and anchovies as well as pushing in sprigs of rosemary and slivers of garlic.

An excellent dinner - and I am now sold on pomegranate seeds ( for main course and dessert).

To brighten my home I decided to pick some flowers from my garden and displayed them in a vase given to me for Christmas. The vase was made by a friend whose painting I had previously bought. I liked the vase because it reminds me of the Japanese prints Vincent van Gogh used for inspiration.

At this time of the year the hydrangeas in my swamp are in flower so I picked a couple of bunches.

To complete this mix of post Christmas images I couldn't resist a photo of a wonderful cushion given to me by my talented sister-in -law featuring a kokako based on a photo take by my brother when we visited Tiri tiri Matangi an island nature reserve in the Hauraki harbour.

After a visit to Auckland for New Year my new year Resolution is to take up painting!! Watch this space.

In the meantime I am saving up ideas for serious blogging when the new school year ( in the Southern hemisphere) begins.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

I bought the property in 1970 and took far too seriously from the previous owner a landscape gardener ( possibly the first landscape gardener in the province) that it was a 'wilderness garden'. As I was busy working as a school adviser the idea appealed.
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A' batch' in the bush - recently painted

I had originally seen the property in 1969 but was unable to put together the money to acquire it. I decided instead to travel to England to visit some creative child-centred schools I had read about.

One reason why I want put up this post is to share the garden with a very good friend I met in 1969 and who I have kept in touch with.
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Decks reach out into the garden

The property, once part of farmland close to the city of New Plymouth, was bought by Mrs V C Davies ( Duncan and Davies were a well known plant nursery based in the city). Mrs Davies added to the original coastal forest almost every native tree you can think of including several kauri. In 1954' D and Ds' landscape gardener bought the land and built a small house with a walking track down from the road. Later the house was added to and a drive established. The new owner then planted a wide range of introduced plants and established some tracks.

After removing some very large introduced trees and a out of control hydrangea hedge, planting smaller natives and spreading shade loving plants like hostas, plus bridges and duck-walks , the garden is now ( more or less) tamed.

‘Educational measurement
doesn't work and shouldn't be called measurement. The reductionism and worship
of quantification in our society is twisting education as a mantra of
"improving scores" drives every decision in the schools. We should
make decisions about education based on what makes sense, not merely on what
improves test scores.’

Or why are other
countries following the USA in destroying their own education systems?

Standardisation

‘A nation that destroys its
systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public
libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement
becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and
literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill
of making money. It churns out stunted human products,lacking the capacity and
vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state.
It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It
transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and
serfs.’

‘...schools whose students
have the highest gains on test scores do not produce similar gains in
"fluid intelligence" -- the ability to analyze abstract problems and
think logically -- according to a new study from MIT neuroscientists working
with education researchers at Harvard University and Brown University.’

The PISA 2012 scores show
the failure of 'market based' education reform.

Pasi Sahlberg - do I need to write anything else?

‘PISA
consumers should note that not every high-scoring school system is successful.
A school system is "successful" if it performs above the OECD average
in mathematics, reading literacy and science, and if students' socio-economic
status has a weaker-than-average impact on students' learning outcomes. The
most successful education systems in the OECD are Korea, Japan, Finland, Canada
and Estonia.My personal takeaway from the PISA 2012
study is how it proves that fashionable Global Educational Reform Movement
(GERM)is built on wrong premises.’

‘Recognizing people or
nations for doing the right thing for the wrong reasons can be misleading and
ultimately unsustainable. PISA's rankings on their own are useless. The
real lessons from PISA are found from researching how each nation achieved their results and then assessing their
methods via ethical criteria that is independent of their results.’

Among the Many Things
Wrong With International Achievement Comparisons

‘My attention was drawn to
the section on “misinterpreting international test scores,” since I have long
felt that these international assessments are a mess of uninterpretable numbers
providing a full-employment program for psychometricians, statisticians, and
journalists.’

‘But as Pisa’s influence
has grown, so has the attention it gets from academics. And 13 years in – with
a towering stack of policy and reforms and reputations at stake – some who have
examined Pisa closely are adamant that the whole thing is built on swampy
statistical ground. Many believe there are problems with the way data is
collected and analysed. These problems go so deep and matter so much, some say,
that we should ignore the rankings completely – and certainly stop using them
to drive changes to the way we teach our children.’

‘Not only are PISA results influenced by experiences “in the home and
beyond”, but there is a sizeable relationship between the level of child
poverty in a country and PISA results. Poverty explains up to 46% of the PISA
scores in OECD countries.’

‘Although the structure and
how the brain works are interesting to learn about what is more important is to
consider how we can create the conditions, or the environment, to ensure we
develop all the potential that lies within each individual brain.’

‘In contrast to the world’s
most innovative organizations, innovation happens slowly in public schooling.
In this article, the author explores the “fear factors” that hold us back from
educational innovation, which include both structural blockers and cultural
blockers. Nevertheless, there is plenty education leaders can do to support
innovation, based on the characteristics observed in centres of innovation:
look outside their own discipline for inspiration; create their own success
criteria; create a safe space for experimentation; give people trust, time and
permission to fail.’

George Orwell must have used Pearson Education as a model for Big Brother...

‘

Pearson Education, an
official partner in the development of resources and tests for the Common Core
State Standards, recently released a video series to share their ‘vision for
the future of learning’. Although the technology shown is impressive, these
videos confirm what many teachers and parents have feared most about Common
Core, unprecedented control and an invasion of student privacy. In these
videos, educators’ teaching styles are monitored by real-time cameras in every
classroom and evaluated on the use of specific points of instruction.’

‘As teachers we
understandably believe that it is the ‘teaching’ that causes learning. But this
is too egocentric a formulation. As I said in my previous post, the learner’s attempts to learn
causes all learning. The teaching is a stimulus; the attempted learning
(or lack of it) is the response. No matter what the teacher says or does, the
learner has to engage with and process the ‘teaching’ if learning is to
happen.’

Secret Teacher: low morale and high pressure leaves no
time for inspiration:

Management's obsessive drive for 'outstanding' will prevent our next
generation from fulfilling their personal goals and dreams

A story from England that will feel very pertinent to teachers in
other GERM infected countries.

‘We are so caught up with data and so many progress checks
that we don't give our students the time to shine. I wonder what would happen
if the greats of the world like Einstein, Gaudi, Picasso and Martin Luther King
were to attend school in 2013, would they be able to cultivate their talents
and thrive?’

‘But
then I remembered what Maria Montessori once said: “Before elaborating any
system of education, we must therefore create a favorable environment that will
encourage the flowering of a child’s natural gifts. All that is needed is to
remove the obstacles.”’

‘Clearly,
however, we can conclude that visiting an art museum exposes students to a
diversity of ideas that challenge them with different perspectives on the human
condition. Expanding access to art, whether through programs in schools or
through visits to area museums and galleries, should be a central part of any
school’s curriculum.’

‘Yet
scientists are discovering that learning cursive is an important tool for
cognitive development, particularly in training the brain to learn “functional
specialization,”[2] that is capacity for optimal efficiency. In the case of learning
cursive writing, the brain develops functional specialization that integrates
both sensation, movement control, and thinking. Brain imaging studies reveal
that multiple areas of brain become co-activated during learning of cursive
writing of pseudo-letters, as opposed to typing or just visual practice.’

‘I
have interviewed many bona fide geniuses, because they tend to make news. Their
life stories suggest that such people are best left alone to educate
themselves, as long as we make sure that they can get to all the riches of our
culture and science and that we don’t require them to take grade-level courses
that hold them back.’

‘Thus, the entire practice
of publicly presenting international comparisons of test results as league
tables and in turn measures of school system quality is arbitrary, and thus
properly understood as pseudo-science and ultimately against authoritative
knowledge.’

‘Perhaps instead of being
hobbled by a mathematical deficit, our kids are instead empowered by a
superabundance of hopeful freedom that allows them to dare big things. A child
who is not allowed to fail becomes an adult who is afraid to try. I posit that,
unchecked, our test-and-punish craze will hurt America's trial-and-error
economy.’

A thoughtful article by Pasi Sahlberg -
important to inform you in any debates about the PISA results.

‘Finland
should also continue to let national education and youth policies — and not
PISA — drive what is happening in schools. Reading, science, and mathematics
are important in Finnish education system but so are social studies, arts,
music, physical education, and various practical skills. Play and joy of
learning characterize Finland’s pre-schools and elementary classrooms.’

‘Probably
the biggest way that artists differ from non-artists is in how the former
observe things. For instance, on a sunny, windy day in the countryside, have
you ever watched the wind blow across the trees? It is fascinating to watch. As
the leaves flutter in the wind, they reflect and deflect the sunlight rapidly,
causing them to flicker and dance in a flow of changing colour and tone.’

Importance of developing
talents of all students; the challenge for 21st C education

Bruce’s latest blog:

‘....Louise Stoll and Lorna
Earl write what is, to me, the real challenge of educational organisations for
the 21stC to develop all their talents to the full and to realize their
creative potential, including responsibility for their own lives and
achievement of their personal aims’.

‘If we can foster more
students and graduates who develop ingenuous ideas and are undaunted by what
they don’t know, support them with mentors to coach and challenge them, and
encourage within them a bold vision backed with adaptive and strategic
thinking, soft and hard skills, then we will have the players who can
create a thriving, dynamic economy.’

‘Creative
principals are concerned with influencing positive changes within the school.
Once again personal mutual relationship and trust between all are vital. To be
able to influence others the staff must see the principal as part of the
working community not isolated worrying about achievement data. In this respect
a successful principal is not unlike a sensitive class teacher.’

Thursday, December 05, 2013

At the end of the school year it is a good idea to gather
information from the students you are passing on.Not only is this a chance for
you to get some insight about your teaching but it is also a great way to value
the ‘voice’ of your students.

What are your students’ attitudes towards areas of learning?

You might also like
to think about developing a similar survey for the beginning of next year to
give some insight into student’s attitudes that they bring with them to your
class. You could include the various learning areas, what they are expecting to
gain from the year with you, and what questions they would like to find out
more about. You might be able to work the later into a negotiated curriculum? For each area chosen provide a 1 (don’t like
at all) to 10 (love it) scale.

If you had completed such an attitudinal survey of students’
attitudes at the beginning of the year the same survey at the end of the year
will indicate positive or negative changes in the students attitudes to the
various learning areas. Attitudes about an area of learning are as important as
achievement.

For the students at
the end of the year:

1. What have been the
three best things you have done this year? Why?

2. What would you
have liked to have done more of this year?

3. What didn’t we do
that I wish we had?

4. In what way have I
changed this year? What areas have I improved in, or grown to like more?

5. What were the
things I didn’t like most this year?

6. What would you
change about how I teach so the class would be better?

7. If you were giving
advice for next year’s students of how to survive in style in my room, what
would you say to them?

Below are some
interesting sentences for students to finish that will give you some idea of
how they see schools, teachers and themselves?

The students’ answers will provide insightful responses, similes, or
metaphors for the class teacher to give attention to.

A school is a place
where……………..

Answers could range from:
….’You have to go’ to…. ‘A place where teachers help students learn’.

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

In the introduction to series of books , Expanding
Educational Horizons, published by Mc Graw Hill Open university Press,the series editorsLouise Stoll and Lorna Earl write what is, to
me, the real challenge of educational organisations for the 21stC;

‘The dizzying speed of the modern world puts education at the
heart of both personal and community development; its mission is to enable
everyone, without exception, to develop all their talents to the full and to
realize their creative potential, including responsibility for their own lives
and achievement of their personal aims’.

magine a country taking such a statement as their starting point – to achieve such a vision would mean the transformation of the current
education system.

An individual school could make the challenge its own
vision.

‘Education’, unfortunately’ write Stoll and Earl, ‘doesn’t
always keep up with the times. Sometimes it appears to be moving in step with
changes; at other times it seems to be in the wrong century.

Years of research around school reform have shown Stoll and
Earl that ’tinkering around the edges won’t helpeducators meet the challenges
that children and young people will face the future.Current interventions are
having limited effects’.

Interventions such as modern information technology have ,
as yet , not challenged the basic assumptions of schools with their genesis in
an industrial age that hold on

Back to the 50s

to a transmission of knowledge approach to often
unwilling students.The challenge of realizing the creative potential of all
students requires a personalisation of learning rather than a ‘one size fits
all’ mentality where differences are accommodated by ability grouping, tracking
or streaming. And this applies as much for primary schools as it does for
secondary schooling.

Countries , like New Zealand, that
focus on National Standards, are looking back to past schooling requirements
and, this is worse in countries like the UK, the US and Australia, where
national testing is imposed by populist politicians. In such environments, with
their focus on literacy and numeracy achievement data, curriculums are narrowed and
all too often teachers are forced to teach to the tests for their own survival.

No room then, in such toxic
environments, for creativity, talent development or personalisation of
learning. And even with such regressive policies ‘the educational achievement’,
Stoll and Earl write, ‘between the most and least advantage is still far too
wide in many places’. And, it is important to note, this achievement is limited
to literacy and numeracy which results in the range of unique talents of
students being ignored.

What schools need to be worried
about is the need to provide opportunities for students to broaden their
knowledge, skills and attitudes so as to have the opportunity to have their
innate talents recognised or uncovered. This is the intent of the 2007 NewZealand Curriculum all but side-lined by the imposition of National Standards.

Thomas Armstrong, in his book
‘Awakening Genius’ believes teachers are at risk of losing the importance of
the sheer joy of learning new things and writes, ‘I’m

troubled that modern
educators have become caught up in the world of standards, curriculum,
assessment, discipline management, budgets, policies, and bureaucracy that they
have lost the ability to see clearly the simple truth of the joy of learning as
the crucial foundation for everything else in learning.’ He continues as educators we want to assist them in finding their inner genius
‘and support them in guiding
it into pathways that can lead to personal fulfilment’. Armstrong believes that
a focus on developing the genius (talents/interests) would effect the ‘greatest
transformation ever seen in our schools.’

‘What is required’, emphasize Stoll
and Earl,’ is a bold and imaginative reorientation’ by all involved of
educational purposes, policies and practices.’

The editors believe their series
provides a forum for thinking about different and more powerful ways to help
students take a more proactive role in their own futures and more positive
roles for teachers and other adults to best help them by creating learning
environments designed in such a way to ensure success for all students by
helping them realise the unique talents of each learner.

The authors hope that their series
will provide fresh views on things schools take for granted, to challenge
current assumptions and provide inspiration for alternative ways; to offer ‘a
variety of perspectives of what education could be; not what it has been, or
even , is’.

Just looking how time is apportioned
to the various learning areas, a look at what is being assessed may be a start,
to engage the imagination to look beyond current provisions. There is no
suggestion that exposure to in depth knowledge , or literacy and numeracy are
no longer important, it is just that they need to be ‘reframed’ so as to ensure
all students are given the opportunities to develop their talents. Naturally ‘learning how to learn’ – the full range of inquiry and expressive skills need
to be seen as vital to achieve talent based personalised learning. Students’
attitudes, sense of identity and accomplishments need to be seen central in a personalised
system.Books , such as those such as those in this series and many others,
encourage readers to look beyond current provisions, to inspire, to motivate,
to work with others and to most of all to stimulate deep change and concrete
possibilities’.The authors believe
‘educators need the stimulus of external ideas’. They also need to value and
share the ideas of non-conformist teachers who may well have ideas that hold
future school actions in their efforts.